Comment by silcoon

A bit older than you but yes, the feeling is kind of there. Let's try to be a bit more precise:

> no hope of ever living a fruitful and meaningful life

This is wrong. Fruitful and meaningful life can be lived anyway independently from your career and from your financial situation. Since it seems that job opportunity and growth might shrink without "hustling" or "grinding", it's extremely important to learn from a young age what really gives meaning to life, and this task has to be done entirely by you. No quick course, no AI or tutorial can teach you this. You need to learn it by yourself when you're young because it would probably make a real difference for the rest of your life. There are some tools for it, and the best one are probably books, and fiction can be really powerful to shape your thinking. I don't know you but I'll start from this one if you haven't read it before (don't think too much about the title and the tone, concentrate on the topic): The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck

> get awfully depressed

Yes, this is a bit the feeling that over-exposition to social media provokes in a lot of people. Everything seems going shit; politics, climate, wars, nothing is right anymore. Idk you but my life is pretty stable, go out with friends, cook nice meals, traveling, stuff like that. So yes this are real problem in the world, but media currently over-expose us to this things (because it helps them sell articles and make you click). The easiest solution might be detoxing from media, and replace that with learning how things work for real trough books.

> The means by which I could ever potentially earn a living are slowly destroyed.

Unfortunately no-one know this for sure, so it doesn't make sense to overthink it. The technology field is changing but AIs are not near replacing humans yet. Technology has the power to automate and so replace every single job out there, so it's a field that still has work to be done and so investment will come in. It's just the current time that seems not right, and mostly it's because rich entrepreneurs tied themself with politics, to save their ass and make even more money in a period of political instability.

The future doesn't look bright, but learn how not to fall in a negativity trap created by media and internet.